The Animated Athlete - Part IV!

 Hey everyone! 

This week has been an exciting one here at FIEA! Not only did we have a Capstone Status Update last week, but we also all made some incredible progress on our Common Art projects! (party noises)

I have worked really hard over the past two weeks with the hopes I would have something cool to show you all this week. Hopefully, this counts for something, right? 

So this week, I added a lot to the project, with direction from my animation teachers, Cheryl and Jonathan. I was working really hard to make the animation loop and trying to fix the issues I was having with the legs over-extending. 

As I figured out with the arms last week, there is this setting called "Body Space" and "Stretch" on the various appendages on Ray. This gives him a cartoonier look, which can be appealing in some instances. In this instance, however, it was not appealing at all. His arms and legs looked like they broke, which made the animation much scarier than it probably should have been.

During animation class, Jonathan and Cheryl helped me to troubleshoot this issue, which could be turned to "0" in the channel box, preventing Ray's bones from breaking. Unfortunately, I was not able to fix the leg entirely, but it doesn't "pop" as much as it did in the previous iteration. I'm going to go back to the drawing board in animation class and ensure that I have the proper protocol down for troubleshooting this issue. 

So, now Ray's knees do this weird floaty thing, which is my bootleg solution for reducing the pop. Since I didn't entirely solve the issue of the popping knee, I figured a way to temporarily cheat the issue would be to key and copy the pose I did want until the leg moved. Unfortunately, since the character is bound and constrained to a ball, he moves ever-so-slightly and his feet twitch back and forth. This is most noticeable on his right foot. 

I did, however, make the animation look much better than it did last week by putting the feet flat on the ground. Previously, he had been putting all of his weight on his arms and the ball, with his feet erratically kicking to and fro, even if the ball was not anywhere near him. It honestly looked like one of those animatronics at Disney, which was really creepy and led me to just plant them. While they do still slide, Jonathan did show me how to do that in a help file. I'm going to reference his help file and learn how to do the process on my own, so I can figure out this issue in future projects.

So yeah! My ball and character now properly loop. The animation loop point is a bit rough around the edges, but it is ultimately much smoother than where I was last week. Last week, the ball zipped around like a UFO from the last place he kicked it to frame 1 of the animation. Now, it rolls down his leg, bounces up, and arcs into the first pose. 

As per Jonathan's suggestions, I also made the second soccer ball (the one he kicks on the ground) interact with a rock and roll back to the player. I need to make the motion slower, but now it doesn't look like Ray is playing with an imaginary friend or ghost. That would be scary and I'm happy that now there is a small environmental object for him to interact with.

But yeah! 

While this week was very crazy both in and outside of FIEA, I'm happy that I got to make some time to animate my Animated Athlete! I'm excited to showcase what I've done to the class and get more feedback moving forward. 

I think Ray's soccer moves are great and I am so happy that the Animated Athlete is shaping up to be a nice addition to my portfolio.

For reference, here is what the project looks like now:

And here's what it looked like last Sprint:

And here's the animation from my first Sprint!

They grow up so fast, don't they?

So, now instead of being 81 frames, this animation is around 100 and it loops relatively seamlessly. I just have to work on making the motion more natural, but I am thankful, at least, that it is much easier. 

Jonathan did suggest utilizing the Ultimate Ball Rig in place of this Maya Ball Rig I'm using, which I might do in the future. For now, too much depends on this ball rig for me to change it at the moment. I do agree that the other rig is easier, but I've already dug my grave with this. It's a definite stretch goal, though, and I will keep it in mind-- which is why I'm bringing it up here! 

As always, thanks for looking! Excited to see what everyone else has made this week!

See you soon!